Guardian: Hollywood tears up script to make anti-war films while conflicts rage

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Tradition overturned as star-studded movies deal with Iraq and Afghanistan

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Tuesday August 14, 2007

....


For Americans sitting in cinemas watching the summer's fun movies, such as The Simpsons and Hairspray, the trailer for Lions for Lambs is jarring and unexpected. It opens with a moody shot of the Washington Memorial, and shifts to a series of quick-fire scenes about President George Bush's "war on terror".

Lions for Lambs, scheduled for release in the US on November 9, is not a documentary nor an art house film nor even a Michael Moore-style piece of agitprop. It is mainstream Hollywood, starring Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, who also directed it. It is one of about a dozen Hollywood films due for release or being made that deal with America divided, the national debate over Iraq and Afghanistan, and other consequences of 9/11.


Hollywood tears up script to make anti-war films while conflicts rage


Tradition overturned as star-studded movies deal with Iraq and Afghanistan

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Tuesday August 14, 2007
The Guardian

Lions for Lambs
The stars of Lions for Lambs. Photograph: PR


For Americans sitting in cinemas watching the summer's fun movies, such as The Simpsons and Hairspray, the trailer for Lions for Lambs is jarring and unexpected. It opens with a moody shot of the Washington Memorial, and shifts to a series of quick-fire scenes about President George Bush's "war on terror".

Lions for Lambs, scheduled for release in the US on November 9, is not a documentary nor an art house film nor even a Michael Moore-style piece of agitprop. It is mainstream Hollywood, starring Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, who also directed it. It is one of about a dozen Hollywood films due for release or being made that deal with America divided, the national debate over Iraq and Afghanistan, and other consequences of 9/11.

This is a departure for Hollywood. During the second world war, there were almost no films made other than propaganda ones. The same happened during Vietnam: it was three years after the fall of Saigon before film-makers felt brave enough to make explicit anti-war movies - Mash hid its colours behind humour and a previous war.

Jerry Sherlock, director of the New York Film Academy and executive producer of movies including The Hunt for Red October, welcomed the prospect of movies coming out while wars were being waged. "I think it is great because films do influence people. I hope that the films coming out influence people. The truth sets us free, after all the bullshit that we get every day in Washington and the airways and Cheney... I am surprised it has taken so long," he said.

Lions for Lambs interweaves the stories of two American students who end up in Afghanistan, their idealistic professor, a senator and a journalist. The trailer shows Cruise, who plays the senator, in his office on Capitol Hill shouting at the journalist, Streep: "Do you want to win the war on terror? Yes or no? This is the quintessential yes or no question of our time."



http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2148221,00.html

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

1. The artists lead, always.

The artists are carrying a heavy load. MKJ

[villager]

2. From the article: "American conservatives, without having seen it, have begun vilifying...

...'Lions for Lambs.'"

Of course.